Topics - Willsorr75

This innovative new hybrid battery pack has a twist: its disposable fuel cells can be charged with water. Pour a little water into a “power puck” ($4 apiece; 1 oz.) and you’ll generate enough energy for a single smartphone charge. The PowerTrekk also has a lithium-ion battery pack that can be charged via USB cable, so you’re not wedded to the fuel cell system—at least for your first charge. At over $200, this device isn’t cheap, but does have a few advantages: it’s only 8 ounces and can power your phone or GPS off-grid faster than a typical solar charger; and it’s durable enough to bounce around in your pack and withstand splashes. IPhone adapter included.

$229 at REI

BioLite CampStove

What’s cooler than a super-efficient camp stove that weighs only two pounds and requires only twigs for fuel? How about one that charges your iPhone. The heat generated by the BioLite fuels a thermoelectric generator that powers USB-chargeable devices: smartphones, headlamps, GPS devices and more. Twenty minutes of fire will not only boil water for your morning coffee and cook your breakfast, it’ll give you 60 minutes of talk time on your iPhone or Android smartphone.$129.95 at BioLiteStove.com

FlameStower

BioLite isn’t the only way to harness the power of your campfire for the benefit of your electronic gear. Debuting at this summer’s Outdoor Retailer product show, the FlameStower also uses a thermoelectric generator. You fill up the water reservoir and position the generator over an open flame or other heat source. Its USB output charges at about half the rate of a wall outlet, say the manufacturers, so you can completely charge an iPhone in about 3 hours, depending on the heat of the flame. Good for any USB-chargeable device, it’s only 8 ounces and collapses down to a very stowable 7.75” x 2.25” x 1”-package (inset). Available for pre-order.

$69.99 at FlameStower.com

The PowerPot

The third fire-powered charger on this list uses similar technology in a slightly different way. Whereas the BioLite is the stove itself and the FlameStower uses heat from another source, the PowerPot places the generator on the bottom of a pot you can use to boil up to 46 ounces of water. A flame-resistant USB cable will recharge your smartphone, digital camera or other device at slightly faster rate the other chargers—under 2 hours, the manufacturers claim. Like the FlameStower, you need to keep an eye on the water level, and, at 18 ounces with lid and cable, it’s a tad heavier than average camping pot. (Hint: the lid can be flipped upside down for use as a frying pan.)$149.00 at ThePowerPot.com

I ran across this article the today. Seems to be a bit old, but I've never seen it before so I figured I would share... I find it amazing how every little creature has it's place no matter how someone would categorize it's importance.

"Over the past four years, bee colonies have undergone a disturbing transformation. As helpless beekeepers looked on, the machine-like efficiency of these communal insects devolved into inexplicable disorganization. Worker bees would fly away, never to return; adolescent bees wandered aimlessly in the hive; and the daily jobs in the colony were left undone until honey production stopped and eggs died of neglect. In reports to agriculture experts, beekeepers sometimes called the results “a dead hive without dead bodies.” The problem became so widespread that scientists dubbed it Colony Collapse Disorder, and according to the US Department of Agriculture, the syndrome has claimed roughly 30 percent of bee colonies every winter since 2007. As biologists scramble to understand the causes, suggesting everything from fungal infections to parasites and pollution, farmers worry that the bee population will collapse into total extinction. If bees go extinct, their loss will trigger an extinction domino effect because crops from apples to broccoli rely on these insects for pollination.

At the same time over a third of the world's amphibian species are threatened with extinction too, leading many researchers to call this the era of “amphibian crisis.” But the crisis isn't just decimating bees and frogs. Harvard evolutionary biologist and conservationist E.O. Wilson estimates that 27,000 species go extinct per year.

Are we in the first act of a mass extinction that will end in the death of millions of plant and animal species across the planet, including us?

That's what proponents of the “sixth extinction” theory believe. As the term “sixth extinction” suggests, our planet has been through five mass extinctions before. The dinosaur extinction was the most recent but hardly the most deadly: Only about 50 percent of all species on Earth were extinguished after a series of natural disasters 65 million years ago. 185 million years before that, there was a mass extinction so devastating that paleontologists have nicknamed it the Great Dying. At that time, ninety-five percent of all species on the planet were wiped out over a span of roughly 100,000 years – most likely from megavolcanoes that erupted for centuries in Siberia, slowly turning the atmosphere to poison. And three more mass extinctions, some dating back over 400 million years, were caused by ice ages, invasive species, and radiation bombardment from space.

The term “sixth extinction” was coined in the 1990s by paleontologist Richard Leakey. At that time, he wrote a book about how this new mass extinction began 15,000 years ago, when the Americas teemed with mammoths, as well as giant elk and sloths. These turbo-vegetarians were hunted by equally large carnivores, including the saber tooth cat, whose 8-inch fangs were so large that they curved from between the big cat's lips to well beneath its chin. But shortly after humans' arrival on these continents, the megafauna populations collapsed. Leakey believes human habitat destruction was to blame for the extinctions thousands of years ago, just as it can be blamed today for the amphibian crisis. Leakey's rallying cry has morphed into sober scientific papers today, where respected biologists detail the evidence of a mass extinction in the making. New Yorker environmental journalist Elizabeth Kolbert has tirelessly reported on scientific evidence gathered over the past two decades that corroborates the idea that we might be living through the early days of a new mass extinction.

Though some mass extinctions happen quickly, most take hundreds of thousands of years. So how would we know whether one was happening right now? The simple answer is that we can't know for sure. What we do know for certain, however, is that mass extinctions have decimated our planet on a regular basis throughout its history. The Great Dying involved climate change similar to the one our planet is undergoing right now. Other extinctions may have been caused by radiation bombardment or stray asteroids, but as we'll see in the first section of this book, these disasters' most devastating effects involved environmental changes, too.

My point is that regardless of whether humans are responsible for the sixth mass extinction on Earth, it's going to happen. Assigning blame is less important than figuring out how to prepare for the inevitable and survive it. And when I say “survive it,” I don't mean as humans alone on a world gone to hell. Survival must include the entire planet, and its myriad ecosystems, because those are what keep us fed and healthy.

There are many ways we can respond to the end of the world as we know it, but our first instincts are usually paralysis and depression. After all, what can you do about a comet hurtling towards us through space, unless you're Bruce Willis and his crack team of mega-astronauts on a mission to blow that sucker up with a bunch of nukes? And what can you do to stop global environmental changes? This kind of “nothing can be done” response is completely understandable, but it rarely leads to pragmatic ideas about how to save ourselves. Instead, we are left imagining what the world will be like without us. We try to convince ourselves that maybe things really will be better if humans just don't make it.

I'm not ready to give up like that, and I hope you aren't either. Let's assume that humans are just getting started on their long evolutionary trek through time. How do we switch gears into survival mode?"

I ran across this today while doing some research, and thought I should share.

"Some people believe that we are hurling towards physical disaster with our delicate electrical grid. Just how that disaster might occur is open for debate, but we need only look at major power outages over the last few years to see how precarious our grasp on electricity is. It isn’t a matter of “if” the lights will go out, but a matter of “when”."

Not sure if this topic has been researched, so please fill free to move this if necessary. There will be few things available to mankind once the crud hits the fan. Most likely wood/trees will be the only thing beneficial and easy to come by. I'm hoping to stir the intelligence combined by the members of this site and come up with creative ways to use wood to help make our lives more comfortable. To kick it off I'll start with sharing the information I found on a travel stove. Would be light weight and make cooking/boiling water easier. I look forward to the ideas you all can come up with... Again, if this has already been discussed please point me in the right direction. Thanks..

Has anyone done any research on walkie talkies? I've read there are two types FRS and GMRS. I'm wanting to have something for communication with my family when and after the SHTF. I'd like to be able to scout/forage outside my home after "the event" and be able to still communicate with my family held up in the house. Example: If we were to run out of water, there is a river about 1/2 a mile from my house. there are several houses and trees between the two and no straight line of view. I'd like to be able to take a communication device and leave one at home to allow constant communication. Also I'm sure half of my neighbor hood will not be prepared, so they will either pass away or try to travel to a larger city seeking help. This would leave multiple houses with possible supplies waiting for the taking. Having a communication device would be great for someone to keep a watchful eye while another is searching a home.

I've read you have to have a license for GMRS. Would GMRS even work if there was a power outage? Could someone in range of my home hear our communication on another walkie talkie. If so, is it worth the risk? The below link is a 2012 review of some popular walkie talkies. The one which came in first seems very affordable, but will the features even be useful once the shtf? I hope to purchase 2-4 in the next month. Any input/suggestions will be appreciated.http://walkie-talkie-review.toptenreviews.com/

Not sure if this has been done yet, but it would be great if we had a list of recent TV shows and Movies that deal with events that cause a global catastrophe. I've loved these types of movies ever since I watched the original Planet of the Apes. Some of these movies/shows can give some great ideas. I'm just wondering if there are any out there that I haven't seen yet. I will start the list off with a few. Some of you might not agree with some choices, but I feel everyone has their own genre...

February, 2011 – NASA shuts down their WISE satellite – a far better infrared telescope than IRAS was and responsible for discovering a large number of Near-Earth Objects (NEOs).

March 30, 2011 – NASA shut down its Buzz Internet Forum almost immediately after someone posted a recalculated trajectory for Elenin at only 0.004 AU (that’s less than 40,000 miles from Earth) as opposed to the official claim of 20 million miles or more.

April, 2011 - SETI shuts down their Allen Telescope Array, placed into “hibernation.” (The SETI Institute was founded in 1984, the year following the supposed discovery of Planet X and operates one of the only arrays of this kind.)

July 21, 2011 – NASA shuts down its aging space shuttle mission and retires the fleet.

August 1, 2011 – NASA openly admits that they will be turning the Stereo-B Satellite on a 135 degree roll downwards in order to observe the approaching comet Elenin.

Late August, 2011 – Trips to the International Space Station are put on hold as a Russian rocket fails. Russia is now the only country that has the technology to ferry astronauts to the Space Station and all lift-offs are on hold.

September 1, 2011 – NASA publicly considers abandoning the International Space Station and mainstream media stories of space debris begin circulating, along with science “advisors” speaking about the effects and potential outcome of an unmanned space station and various other space-related headlines surrounding the Space Station.

Once the population starts to die off. there will be dead bodies all over the place. We won't be able to burn them all.. SO, does anyone know how long a body would have to be dead before mosquitoes quit snacking on them? I'm wondering the mosquitoes will contract deases from the dead, and pass it along to us when they bite us? Maybe a stupid question, but makes me want to stack up on mosquito spray even more, at least until someone tells me otherwise!!

I currently own a mossberg 500 12g shotgun. I'm thinking I'll need something for long range. My dilemma is I'm spending most of my money to stock up on food and other small things, so I need to get something affordable. Should I go with a rifle, or handgun. I know rifles can be cheap compared to handguns. Would a 22 rifle even be worth buying? I saw one at Walmart the other day for 129.00!

I'm currently building a Faraday cage for my laptop and smart phone along with a few other things. I was wondering what kind of ideas everyone could come up with in regards to computer programs and phone apps that might help us survive after the crap hits the fan. I have a couple of ideas that I will share later. I just wanted to see first if anyone shares the same. Thanks in advance for any input..

This poll can benefit those who find it hard to come up with the money for preparation. The first step is the most important when moving forward. When it comes to survival, there is no room for mistakes...

Not sure where to place this query, but has anyone thought about placing a News Ticker on the site with up-to-date news about Elenin, etc? Would be great to be able to read it, and find out everything here, instead of searching the net for the latest. The news in the ticker could also point to topics already created. Just an idea. Thanks.